CEO of ‘Stop-Arm’ camera company says citations are legitimate

The CEO of a company that is ticketing Texas motorists who are caught on camera passing stopped school buses said that his program will continue to operate and all citations are legitimate and lawful.

In the case of the dissolution committee of Dallas County Schools, who has told ticketed motorists to disregard citations issued by the company, BusPatrol CEO Jean Souliere believes, “Dallas County Schools has chosen not to hold a citizen accountable for putting children’s lives in danger.”

“If society doesn’t think this kind of thing should be stopped, what kind of society are we?” Souliere said.

“The ordinances have been passed and the collections process is compliant with those ordinances,” Souliere said. “Those tickets are issued by the local police, we cannot issue tickets. I cannot comment on the logo, but the citation is compliant.”

BusPatrol in December told school districts that it had taken over the cameras that snap a picture of motorists who pass stopped school buses in violation of state law.

Several school districts had previously signed contracts with DCS — which voters elected to dissolve in November — and Force Multiplier Solutions, to allow the cameras on their buses in exchange for a cut of the ticket fee.

But BusPatrol is not authorized to collect the money, according to the Dallas County Schools Dissolution Committee.

“…We learned that BusPatrol America has been given unauthorized access to our camera kits and in some cases removed them from your school buses,” reads a letter sent in January from the committee to school districts with contracts for the bus cameras. “This company does not have a contract with the Committee or DCS and should not be granted access to equipment owned by the Committee.”

Souliere contends his company is the legitimate owner of the intellectual property of the bus cameras and will continue to operate in Texas.

He said the committee is simply seeking to “shut it down and get as much money as possible and not thinking of the long term.”

Instead, Souliere is sure the endeavor can succeed and prosper in the right hands.

“We were also victims of Forced Multiplier and DCS,” he said. “Our investment group owned the Canadian license and we then acquired the intellectual property to protect over three years of investment. So we wait to see how this will play out.”

It will likely start with communications from lawyers of at least one Texas city.

“We do not send out collections letters,” Robert Wood, City Administrator for West Lake Hills, told The Texas Monitor.

West Lake Hills provides the court to hear contested tickets issued by the bus camera plan. The town’s police department is the law enforcement agency formally issuing the citations.

In a follow up email, Wood said, “We are…going to have a conversation with our legal counsel to see about sending a cease and desist type letter to [BusPatrol] to tell them to stop using the City’s logo and stop representing that they are working for or on behalf of the City.”

The Eanes school district said in a statement that it is, “unfortunately and unfairly, caught in the middle of a legal fight between companies and we are working with outside counsel to determine next steps. We are frustrated any citations or worse, collection notices are being issued unlawfully under our name or our jurisdictions’ names.”

The Texas Monitor reported in January that BusPatrol was meeting with school districts, trying to keep contracts signed with DCS intact and telling school districts that it was the new owner of the cameras.

BusPatrol has the same Virginia and Quebec, Canada addresses as Force Multiplier did. The Dallas address, once listed on the Force Multiplier site, is now gone. The company was dissolved in January.

Force Multiplier Solutions is implicated in a federal bribery scandal that has so far netted guilty pleas from Slater Swartwood Sr., a sales agent with Force Multiplier and former Dallas County Schools Superintendent Rick Sorrells.

DCS in 2010 contracted with Force Multiplier for the bus cameras. Prosecutors say that Sorrells opened shell companies in the names of family members to push the bribe money through.

A federal complaint charging Swartwood filed in December, says he, “sold cameras and related services for school buses…entered into various contracts and a licensing agreement with a Texas state agency acting through its superintendent…under these contracts and the licensing agreement, the state agency purchased millions of dollars of camera equipment…”

All of which has nothing to do with BusPatrol, where Souliere insists he is ready to straighten the situation out.

“These counties are issuing legitimate tickets and I am willing to sit at the table and come up with solutions to this that benefit children and taxpayers,” he said. “We wrote the check and grabbed this technology and severed all relations with Force Multiplier Solutions and ensured that this program survived. We saved a lot of people a lot of grief.”

Steve is a veteran journalist, who has previously worked at the Dallas Morning News and the Washington Times, as well as Texas Watchdog. His work has appeared in the Houston Press, Miami New Times, People Magazine, and High Times. He also travels the country writing true crime books. His work has won awards in national, regional, and state contests.

You may be missing the point here. This is one of several attempts to shift law enforcement to private, profit making companies and it’s a set up rife with corruption which invites more corruption due to lack of oversight. No one but POLICE needs to be issuing traffic citations..

No, I got that part. My point was that if one gets a ticket for this offence I have no sympathy, because lives were endangered so that one wasn’t inconvenienced by following the law. If the camera is only triggered when the arm is extended and the red lights are flashing there shouldn’t be a picture of one’s vehicle passing the bus, so which entity that collects the fine would be a moot point. Additionally, if no one but POLICE can issue a ticket we would need one on the bus and another to chase and pull over the vehicle for every school bus route unless you would be okay with the children stopping and waiting for every ticket to be written. I’m all for hiring more police, but I think the cameras are much more efficient. Maybe the solution is to have the system manned at a police station so the tickets can be issued from them locally; I’m not married to any particular way of dealing with the issue, but either way these offenders need to be punished for their careless disregard of the law and children’s lives.